Treasure of the Sun (4 page)

She lifted her hands to her forehead and rubbed it as if she could polish the information out of her brain. "As you've just pointed out, what I do recall, I don't recall correctly."

His hand slashed the air. "You remember the chain of events perfectly. You left my home-"

"-after the wedding reception you gave us. It had been one week since I'd disembarked in Monterey. You and Tobias had greeted me."

“Only one week." He sighed as if he couldn't believe it.

“You arranged for us to be married in an English ceremony right away. You stood up with us and you loaned us your home while you stayed at the Medinas so we could be alone."

"Yes."

He sounded grim, but she ignored that, lost in memories the happiest time of her life. "You arranged the reception for at your house. After the guests left, you and Tobias teased into going to the cantana for a late supper. You went on ahead to arrange the meal. I stopped to speak to Senora Medina, Tobias waited for me, but the senora told him she'd bring me when we'd finished talking, and he went on ahead."

"You're a trusting soul, you know." Standing up straight, reached into his pocket and pulled out one of the long, thin cigars. He rolled it between his fingers and sniffed it with connoisseur's appreciation. "You come here with me after your husband is killed with no thought to the facts. It could have been I who slashed his throat."

He sounded sharply critical, but she said, "No." She said with complete certainty. "It wasn't you."

Placing the cigar in his mouth, he brought forth a wooden lucifer and pulled it through the abrasive paper. A shower sparks, the noxious odor of rotten eggs, and the stick blazed. “I don't look like the attacker?"

"I didn't see the attacker," she insisted, watching his eyes' the brief glare as he ignited his cigar, then shook out the flam "Senora Medina left me at the corner. I could see Tobias, shiny domed head before me, crossing the street." She examined the scene in her mind and turned to him. Smoke drift about them, the cigar clutched between his fingers. The cloud had whisked away from the moon, and a feeble light illuminate his face. With earnest candor, she put her hands on his shoulders. "I always knew I could trust you, even when I couldn’t think. You weren't nearby when he was killed, and I was. You didn't know me at all." Her fingers gripped him; they trembled "Perhaps I'm the one who slashed his throat."

She wasted her candor. His mouth turned down on one side and he struggled to keep a straight face. "No. For several reasons. If you could have seen yourself that week … you glowed. Your hair gleamed like living sunshine, your eyes with your every mood. Green when you argued, blue with your happiness, a lazy gray when you were sleepy. Men were falling like fools at your feet, and you never even noticed."

"Were they?" she asked, charmed.

"How like a woman to ask!" His voice lowered, deepened.  “And how unusual for you to act like a woman."

"What else have I been acting like?"

He stuck his cigar in his mouth with decision. "Like someone in cotton wool, unaware of events around her yet doing duty without conscious thought."

She took her hands from him as if he burned to the touch. “You've been watching me."

Indecision chased across his face. Taking his cigar from between his teeth, he examined the glowing end as if it were quite fascinating. When he answered, his voice sounded light and different. "How could I be watching you? I haven't been here.”

She didn't answer. He was right, of course, but something the way he stood made her uncomfortable again. In the year, he'd been kind, but distant; caring, but disinterested.

He'd allowed her to find her own feet, only taking time to teach enough Spanish to communicate with his servants before leaving her alone in the house.

She had been, it must be confessed, relieved. In the shock , following Tobias's death, she'd done as Damian had told her, with no thought to the future. But as shock had worn off, leaving greater awareness, she'd realized Don Damian de la Sola's position.

He was not some elderly philanthropist, His age matched , Tobias's. At thirty-one, Tobias had been older than she, but she'd been twenty-two on the day she'd accepted his proposal. Damian was of an age to attract her, and that thought alone frightened her. Like a child providing a distraction, she argued "I could have contrived his death somehow."

"You'd have had to be the finest actress God ever created. However, there's another part to slitting someone's throat. Tobias was my best friend, and he wasn't stupid. He wasn't a big man, but his hands contained a workman's strength. How could someone have gotten close enough to slit his throat?"

"What do you mean?"

"There are so many strangers moving into California. Some of them have an unsavory past. Tobias knew that. He was wary but you don't slit a man's throat in the midst of a crowd."

She winced, awash again in the memory of blood. Panic lurked not far away, and she rubbed her hands up and down her arms in sudden chill.

Damian didn't seem to see, remembering his friend's a mind and searching for an answer to the puzzle. "He must have believed the killer presented no danger to him-and the knife must have been very sharp."

"He was robbed!"

"His wallet was gone," he corrected. "Only his wallet. Not watch, not his rings. Tobias wasn't a rich man. Why would t thief take his wallet when the gold of his jewelry represented so much more sure money?"

"I don't know."

"And to slit his throat. That takes skill. At the time, thought perhaps a farm hand or a rancher was guilty. Someone with experience with the slaughter of cattle." He turned away from her, placed his elbows down on the rail again, stared out the view.

Butchered like a steer. The comparison made her ill. Butchered like a dumb animal with no choice. A pleasant man, decisive man, a man who loved children and puzzles and telling a good tale. A man who never met a stranger, who inspired with enough confidence to join him on his travels and be his wife.

Who could take a man's life coldly, methodically, without concern? Who could so disguise himself that Tobias never suspected the ice in his veins? Her hand crept up to her mouth as sickness assailed her, and she couldn't repress a shudder.

Yet this pain had come to her before. She mastered it, as ore. She knew, in her sensible, well-ordered soul, that such a reaction reeked of indulgence. She knew fainting at the sight of showed weakness, and that the dreams that haunted her should be suppressed. She had never raged or screamed or openly emotional signs of grief. To do so would be weakness. ... but why, after almost a year, was she still so affected?

Lost in his own futile anger, Damian didn't notice anything but her silence, and he tried to explain further. "Everyone I found who knew of such ways of death had an alibi. I've done everything I could to find his murderer, and I've found nothing.”

His despair bit through the fog of misery surrounding her. Seeing his hunched shoulders, she knew a moment of kinship. He suffered, too, from the death of his compadre, and he suffered in a different manner than she did. He was the patron, the lord his lands, of his people. He held himself accountable for the well-being of all who depended on him. Like an umbrella, that deep sense of responsibility protected his family and his friends.

Whether or not he should, he held himself liable for her heavy heart. He held himself accountable for the unavenged justice in the death of Tobias. His compassion touched her, his dejection gave her the courage to speak. With light fingers, she touched his hand. "I'm grateful."

"What?"

He sounded bewildered, and she sought to explain. "I'm grateful. I'm grateful to you for your search for Tobias's killer. I’m grateful for all you've done for me."

"Grateful?"

His voice rasped, but she plunged on, afraid to stop for fear she’d lose her nerve. "I'd be a heedless boor if I never said it. No other person would have been as kind as you've been. To take me into your home, give me a position, pay me well." As she catalogued his indulgences, her voice thickened and quavered. She lowered her head, tears trembling on her lashes. "If there's ever anything I could do to repay you in any way ... “

"No." Flinging the cigar to the deck, he crushed it beneath his heel.

"What?"

"No. I never want to be paid back." He stood straight and proud, his shoulders stiff, his chest thrust out. He looked as he had when facing the horns of the bull, but she didn’t understand why. "Everything I did, I did for Tobias. It had nothing to do with you. Nothing."

Swinging on his heel, he marched to the door and jerked it open. The wind caught it, slamming it back against the hacienda with a crash. Katherine cringed, but he never stopped to see the damage. He left in silence, and she stared after him wondering at the outraged pride of the man.

The riders thundered down the track, controlling their glowing palomino horses with verve and skill. Katherine sat alone on the top step of the porch and hugged her knees, thrilled in spite of herself. The hidalgos were centurions all, bred to the saddle from birth. Their minds and bodies were dedicated to racing. The senoras screamed with excitement, breaking their fans on the shaded benches as the men streaked past. They called the names of their husbands, their sons, their friends, as their flashing eyes and exuberant gestures displayed their pleasure.

There was a great deal of laughter when Don Julio de Casillas beat Damian by a nose, and Katherine smiled tentatively towards Don Lucian as he mounted the stairs to join her. "I don' understand what's so funny."

Don Lucian seated himself on the end of a bench and lit on of his cigars. "Damian claimed he lost because he was a good host and let Julio win."

"Oh." She stared at the shouting crowd around the riders, avoiding his eyes. "That's not correct?"

"Neither Julio nor Damian ever consider manners when given a chance to surpass the other," he assured her. "Did you enjoy the races?"

"Yes. They were ... exciting, in an odd sort of way."

"We'll make a Californio of you yet."

"It's a unique experience for me. In Boston, women are never allowed to attend such an entertainment. In Boston, the men have all the fun." She bestowed on him a prissy smile.

“There you are, Dona Katherina." He touched her cheek. "I thought you must be angry with me. You refused to look at me."

She should have realized that he would notice. Normally she wasn't such a coward. Normally, she looked everyone right in the eye, but she felt a constraint today. A constraint that had its origins this morning, when the servants had cleaned up the broken pane of glass on Damian's patio. Not a word had been spoken, and she'd wondered at the lack of questions and comments. What could she say to Don Lucian? A social lie won out, and she said, "I broke a window last night."

He puffed on his cigar. "Yes, I heard you ... break it." From inside the cradle of her arms, she asked, "Who else heard?"

“The hacienda's grapevine is swift and sure," he said obliquely.

"Everyone knows?" She'd wondered if there were ever any secrets in such a large house, and she'd wondered how many of the guests knew Damian had spoken harshly to his housekeeper. 

Don Lucian patted her shoulder. "Don't distress yourself. It's not sensible.

Was he mocking her? Her head snapped up and she examined his face, but he was watching the events below. "Look!" He gave a shout of mirth and stood up. "Damian's trying to fight Julio."

Distracted, she stood also, squinting through the afternoon sunlight. Two figures danced around each other, one dressed all in black, one a rainbow of brilliant colors. "Why, Don Damian's trying to smash that man's face in."

"You seem so shocked. Didn't you think Damian was a man?"

He sounded so superior, so amused, she lifted her chin. Ignoring that inner voice that reminded her she'd noticed exactly how much of a man Damian was, just yesterday, she sniffed. "Indeed? Is that how you judge a man? By his abilities with his fists?"

"I judge my son to be a man because he uses his fists only on those capable of defending themselves. He only displays his talents for those capable of appreciating them, and he only courts the woman he loves."

With stiff dignity, she said, "The fighting gentlemen seem to have been separated by their friends. What are those stable hands doing now?" She indicated the boys running out to the track, one lugging a cage full of roosters, the other holding a shovel.

Don Lucian accepted the change of subject without a qualm.

"A rooster is buried up to its neck in sand in the middle of the race track. Young caballeros race past and snatch the rooster out of the ground by its head."